Still in denial on summer jobs policy
Liberals change course, but don’t get all the anger
Sanity has broken out, however briefly, in Ottawa. After nearly a year of protests from religious groups, the federal government has finally changed the eligibility requirements for the federal summer job funding program to what they should have been in the first place. Projects and jobs receiving funding must not “advocate intolerance, discrimination and/or prejudice,” and they must not “actively work to undermine or restrict a woman’s access to sexual and reproductive health services.”
Simple. Clear. God only knows why it was so hard. The goal is, and always was, to prevent public money from flowing to organizations the Liberals consider villainous — chiefly antiabortion groups.
The logical course of action was to prevent money from going to such groups. Instead the government demanded an applicant attest that “both the job and my organization’s core mandate respect individual human rights in Canada, including the values underlying the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” and including “reproductive rights.”
It was largely inscrutable: Whether individual human rights in Canada “include(e) the values underlying the … Charter” is a question for judges and law professors, not for the Big Smelly Bear Bible Ranch. And to the extent it was scrutable, it was widely and logically understood as demanding organizations pledge fealty to the Charter and to an ostensible human right to abortion.
Despite having no intention of advocating against abortion rights or even broaching the topic between canoe trips, archery and campfire singalongs, many religious groups — notably summer camps — quite understandably found themselves unable to sign it.
Some made up the difference for summer 2018 with outside fundraising. Some didn’t. It was a totally unnecessary drama.
The new policy certainly won’t please everyone — particularly those who want public money to campaign against abortion rights. But it is a coherent expression and enforcement of the firm, well-known and oft-articulated pro-choice position of this government. Whereas the previous policy at least arguably infringed upon Canadians’ freedom of religion, the new one certainly does not.
John Geddes of Maclean’s described the move as “a bid to make peace with faith-based groups.” That would be a good idea. You wouldn’t know it from consuming mainstream Canadian media, but according to a 2017 Angus Reid survey, 51 per cent of Canadians consider themselves either “religiously committed” or “privately faithful.” Twothirds believe “that God or a higher power exists,” and 53 per cent that “God is active in this world.” The faithful hold very diverse views on abortion, of course, but they tend to stick together when governments disrespect any of their number.
It’s not clear, however, if the Liberals have learned a thing. From the beginning of the controversy, Labour Minister Patty Hajdu insisted that religious organizations ought to be able to sign the attestation just so long as they weren’t planning to campaign against abortion. She and other Liberal partisans seemed unwilling or unable to comprehend a religious organization’s “core mandate” being anything more profound than the services it provides; to understand that the soup kitchen, homeless shelter or summer camp it runs is a manifestation of members’ shared religious beliefs.
Asked by Geddes if she had “come around” to these concerns about the government demanding to know what religious organizations believe as opposed to what they do, she argued — as ever — that the language didn’t actually compel them to. And then she blamed the opposition.
“The Conservatives tried to accelerate that fear through their questioning, through the media misrepresentations, through the fearmongering they did, losing sight of the fact that this was about quality jobs for kids,” she said. “If Canadians in any way felt this was about values and beliefs, we needed to make sure that it was crystal clear that it was not.”
Nice of her to throw all us gullible illiterates a bone, I suppose. But “better late than never” doesn’t work when you won’t even admit you had a problem. It’s true that Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives are prone to hyperbole, but that’s how opposition parties operate in this country. Your opponent’s cartoonish outrage says nothing about how well your own message is getting through to real people who vote. In the Liberals’ case, on too many files, the answer is “not very well at all.”